Stasis subclasses getting nerfs, changes again in upcoming Destiny 2 update

Since the new Stasis subclasses were released with the Beyond Light expansion there has been an almost constant outcry from the community regarding their power in PvP. This stems from a frustration over the core mechanics of these subclasses such as freezing and slowing and how these mechanics are simply unfun to play against.

Over the months following Beyond Light’s release there have been several updates to Destiny 2 aimed at bringing the power of these Stasis subclasses inline with the other subclasses. It seems that Bungie does not believe they have quite hit the mark yet as according to the latest ‘This Week at Bungie’ blog post another Stasis update will be deployed on March 23.

Here is a preview of the patch notes:

Hunter

Shatterdive

• Removed damage resistance from Shatterdive.
• Added a 4s cooldown between activations of Shatterdive.

Withering Blade

• Decreased Withering Blade damage against players from 90 to 65 damage. PvE damage is unchanged.
• Decreased Withering Blade slow stacks applied to players from 60 to 40 stacks. PvE slow stacks are unchanged.
• Decreased the target acquisition range of Withering Blade after it impacts a player from 12m to 8m. Range after impacting PvE enemies is unchanged.

As to be expected Shatterdive is seeing yet another nerf. This will hopefully curb the overall spamming of this ability while giving the person on the receiving end at least a small chance to kill the Hunter mid-dive.

Withering Blade has been another problematic Stasis ability that has little counterplay. Withering Blade deals 90 damage, has a large amount of target tracking and can bounce around corners. When a Hunter can hold two of these and most Guardians have a little less than 200 health it becomes obvious why this ability can be a problem. A lot of the mechanics behind Withering Blade are seeing a significant nerf but its good to see that the ability will remain unchanged in PvE.

Titan

Glacial Quake

• Removed AoE freeze against players on super cast. Will still freeze PvE enemies on cast.
• Reduced damage resistance while in super from 60% to 50%.
• Increased the energy cost of using Shiver Strike while in Glacial Quake from 3% to 7% Super energy.
• Using the combo of a Shiver Strike into a Heavy slam attack will now cost the full Super energy of both the Shiver Strike and the slam (previously only cost energy for the slam).

Shiver Strike

• Increased downwards velocity applied to Shiver Striking players when they are slowed to pull them out of the air more strongly.

Since Warlock Shadebinder was heavily nerfed quickly following the release of Beyond Light, the frustrations that were aimed at this subclass have slowly shifted over to the Titan Behemoth. A popular opinion amongst the community is that while the core of the Super itself is fine, it just simply lasts too long and has too much damage resistance so it's good to see both of these are getting hit in this upcoming update.

Warlock

Winter’s Wrath

• Improved tracking of Winter’s Wrath projectiles, now tracking strength decays from its max value over 10s instead of 2.2s.
• Increased the size of the warlock super projectile's proximity detonation radius 1.5m – 1.65m
• The proximity detonation now starts at its largest and scales down to 40% over time.

Penumbral Blast

• Decreased Penumbral Blast damage against players from 80 to 30 damage. PvE damage is unchanged.

Iceflare Bolts

• Fixed a bug where Iceflare Bolts would continuously try to switch targets.
• Increased target acquisition range of Iceflare Bolts by 33%.
• Increased turning speed of Iceflare Bolts so they can more effectively hit nearby targets.

Shadebinder’s Winter’s Wrath Super has been lagging behind the other Supers in Power so it will be seeing a significant buff to its projectile tracking to offset the nerf to Penumbral Blast. What’s interesting about this Penumbral Blast nerf is that at the start of the Season of the Chosen players noticed an undocumented change to this ability with its on-hit damage being drastically lowered from 80 to 38. Bungie acknowledged this as a bug and it was quickly reversed. Now, they must have decided this accidental change could be something they could work with as Penumbral Blast will soon have its damage lowered even further to 30. At least it is a PvP only change as the patch notes specify against ‘players’.

General

Duskfield Grenade

• Reduced how strongly Duskfield Grenade pulls players inwards, effectively reducing the pull range from 9.5m to ~6m. PvE pull impulse is unchanged.
• Reduced the slow stacks applied to players by the grenade detonation from 20 to 10 stacks. Detonation slow stacks are unchanged against PvE.
• Reduced the slow stacks applied to players on each tick of the grenade from 10 to 5 stacks. Per-tick slow stacks are unchanged against PvE.
• Adjusted the UI presentation of the “Slowed” status to display Slow stacks as X/100 instead of X/10, to increase readability when adding Slow stack amounts that are fewer than 10.

Stasis Crystals

• Reduced crystal shatter damage against players from (85 max, 55min) to (55 max, 25 min). PvE damage is unchanged.

Whisper of Chains

• Reduced Whisper of Chains damage resistance bonus while in Super from 25% to 5%. Damage resistance when not in Super is unchanged. This only affects damage from other Guardians.

Whisper of Torment

• Fixed a bug where players could continuously proc Whisper of Torment while standing inside an opponent’s Barricade.

Stasis Fragment Quests

• Significantly reduced objective completion values for all Crucible fragment quests.

Around social media these Stasis changes have seen a largely positive reception due to not only many problematic abilities seeing some nerfs but also due to Bungie targeting these abilities while keeping their power the same in PvE. The community has been asking for some time for Bungie to balance the PvE and PvP sandboxes separately but the studio has remained staunchly against it for most of the franchise's history. This is a step in the right direction in players being able to fulfill their power fantasy in PvE while still remaining balanced in PvP.

These changes to Stasis are still subject to change ahead of their release on March 23.